Friday, June 27, 2008

jam for thought

Or is it. . . better than jam?

Jam
note for my dear paranoid parent friends: mild profanity in some images.

Perhaps this is rather silly of me, but I never really considered--until Darrin made that comment--culture jam as art. As far as wholesale acceptance of herd mentality. . . well. . . that's quite a larger topic.

But I was thinking about the comment, and did a bit of poking about for images of culture jam. Certainly some of them qualify as art, and I think some of the ones I came up with that I've included here may likely not have been intended as culture jam at all.

What I'm trying to do is consider the potentially powerful use of images as a tool to goad people into thinking more, and perhaps in certain directions, about their world.

Here are my favorites from the search--images I found particularly effective, artistic, interesting, or powerful.



Deurbanization
de-urbanization

Nike
just do it

London, after (global warming)
after

When we grow up
defensive



Playfulness can go a long way too. . . consider:

Live in Russia (instead of playing games)
Photobucket

Speeding (what's your excuse)
speeding

Clear Speech
clear speach

Democracy
democracy

Abstinence
Abstinence

P.S. Looks like these images are cut off. The idea in most cases gets across, but if anyone knows how to fix the html and wants to give me a hand, it would still be much much appreciated. Thanks all for putting up with my learning curve.

In "when we grow up", the foot in the foreground belongs to an elderly woman.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Interesting photos.

I like the Nike one, the London one, the Russia one, and the Abstinence one.

Day said...

Yeah. . some of them (like democracy) are on there because I felt they were reasonably good work, making a point, but I guess things really have to be a certain amount of visually arresting (or otherwise startling) in this field to be effective.

I wasn't sure about the russia one as a culture jam, though for some reason I'm really attached to it independent of that. . . maybe because I've always had a bit of a thing for experiencing life instead of games. . . which ironically, this doesn't actually make any kind of argument for. I think that Abstinence, in similar format, is a better jam because because (besides having an excellent gag) it's more likely to leave people thinking about the issues at hand. . . in this case, sex education.

Anonymous said...

Russia isn't much of a jam. I mostly voted on the humor though. I can see democracy as a good jam, but once again, I appreciate the humor of the others more.